USA - Investment advisor and former Assistant Secretary of Housing Catherine Austin Fitts says it looks like a “global recession is coming.” Is that going to cause the debt reset we’ve been hearing about for years? Fitts says, “Make no mistake about it, there is no reason for the federal government to default or monkey with any debt because they can literally print the currency… The question is how do they make sure whatever they are printing really holds any kind of store of value?”

USA - The United States birth rate remains well below the replacement level needed as white American births plummet in all 50 states and the District of Colombia. New federal data released by the Center for Disease Control reveals that American women are having less and less children needed to sustain the current population. In 2017, all but two states in the country had birth rates below replacement level. The total US birth rate was about 1.765 children per woman. The US needs a birth rate of at least 2.1 children per woman to replace the current population of the country without experiencing population decreases.

USA - Ninety-year-old Nobel Prize-winning scientist James Watson has been stripped of his honorary titles by a leading American research institution, after doubling down on his controversial conclusions linking race and intelligence. Despite nearly half a century service to the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), Watson, a world-renowned geneticist, lost all of his honorary titles of Chancellor Emeritus, Oliver R Grace Professor Emeritus and Honorary Trustee, for refusing to retract his own scientific conclusions. In 2007, Watson was suspended from all of his positions held at the New York lab following a scandal centering around his claim about the "inherently gloomy" future of the African continent. “All our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really,” he told the Times newspaper at the time.

NIGERIA - The team — a mix of American, British, Norwegian and Chinese experts, along with Czech and Russian contractors — were supposed to head into the Kaduna region of Nigeria to remove highly enriched uranium from a research reactor that non-proliferation experts have long warned could be a target for terrorists hoping to get their hands on nuclear material. "All of our partners understood that operational security was paramount,” Schwartz said. "The world is a safer place today as a result of the determined work to remove this weapons useable Uranium from Nigeria.” Finally, on December 4, the HEU was escorted by the Nigerian military toward the An-124, loaded onto the aircraft and sent on its way to its final destination. The material was heading for China.

USA - The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives has wasted no time in passing pro-abortion legislation, an “extreme shift” denounced by Catholic leaders. When the House passed a bill to fund the government last week, it not only omitted financing for a border wall, it also expanded taxpayer funding for abortion. “They’re making this one of their conditions to reopen the government, which is a pretty extreme position to say, ‘We’re going to force funding, US taxpayer dollars, to promote abortion overseas as part of our foreign policy,’” said Maureen Ferguson, senior policy adviser for the Catholic Association. Many Catholic groups have expressed concern over the “extreme pro-abortion shift” enacted by the Democratic majority in the House, the article stated.

UK - The true scale of Theresa May’s impending defeat can be revealed as she faces a mountain of opposition to her floundering Withdrawal Agreement. The Prime Minister is facing a trouncing with around 400 MPs expected to vote against her deal on Tuesday. One unnamed Tory MP told the Daily Telegraph: “We’re heading towards a brick wall at 100mph and are going to be smashed to smithereens.”

UK - On Wednesday morning, if predictions are correct, Britain is set to be led by a rudderless Government with a lame-duck Prime Minister wrestling off general election hounding by a directionless opposition with a confused Brexit strategy. We may even have no Prime Minster at all. Exasperated Leave voters are pleading with hardline, and even no-deal, Brexiteer MPs to just give in and vote for the deal to make sure Brexit happens.

HAWAII - The US Air Force is putting China on notice as it announced Friday a new deployment of three B-2 Spirit stealth bombers to Hawaii for training in the Pacific. The nuclear-capable aircraft departed Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, and touched down at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii, along with 200 support personnel airmen, as part of a US Strategic Command-led Bomber Task Force mission. One defense analyst recently called the increase in B-2 bomber deployments to Hawaii "China's nightmare, and something Beijing should get used to."

EUROPE - Nine months ago, most European Union member states took their biggest step yet toward a common European army. It was not, however, a moment that lent itself to easy symbolism: No common European uniform nor common weapons and equipment, nor even a joint high command. Militarily, what the EU now has is rules. They allow for cooperation between individual European states to jointly shape military facilities and capabilities.

GERMANY - As the British parliament prepares for a crucial Brexit vote Tuesday, Germany's far right voted Sunday to break a national taboo by campaigning to quit the European Union if its demand for reforms within the bloc are not met. A party congress gathered in Riesa in Saxony state - the Alternative for Germany's (AfD) biggest stronghold - voted for the demand to be included in its manifesto for European Parliament elections in May. Aware that a vast majority of Germans remain in favour of their country's EU membership, delegates advanced cautiously. They called for a so-called "Dexit" only "as a last resort" if fundamental reforms do not reshape the EU "in an appropriate time frame". But the decision marks the first time in Germany's post-war history that a political party has dared suggest blowing up the nation's EU membership.

USA - When our smartphones, televisions or other gadgets stop working, it seems like the only choice we have is to get rid of it. This never-ending stream of electronic waste has created mountains of toxic trash that’s hazardous to people and the planet. That’s why consumers and lawmakers in the US and Europe are fighting back under the burgeoning “Right to Repair” movement that demands manufacturers make products that last longer and are easier to fix, BBC News reported. At least 18 US states are considering repair legislation and a similar proposal arose in the European Parliament. This change can’t come soon enough. E-waste is the fastest-growing waste stream in the world. In 2016, some 44.7 million metric tonnes of e-waste were generated globally, according to the Global E-waste Monitor 2017. As more and more products come along, experts forecast an increase of e-junk to 52.2 million metric tonnes by 2021.

USA - Could it be possible that a full-blown eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano is not too far away? All over the world seismic activity has been increasing in recent years, and this process seems to have accelerated during the early days of 2019. In particular, quite a few once dormant volcanoes are springing to life again, and this has many concerned about what could potentially happen at Yellowstone.

USA - It has been said that John F Kennedy held a dinner in the White House for a group of the brightest minds in the nation at that time. He made this statement: "This is perhaps the assembly of the most intelligence ever to gather at one time in the White House with the exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

EUROPE - "Europe has to build an army," Wolfgang Clement wrote in yesterday’s issue of this paper. Given the global environment, Europe needs to improve its ability to act on behalf of its own security. He’s right! But he unfortunately failed to mention the progress we Europeans have made in the last few years. Europe’s army is already taking shape. Reforms over the past months and years have brought our armed forces closer together. And not because we’re following requirements from Brussels but voluntarily because the benefits are obvious and because it’s in Europe’s security interests. Germany has just started a two-year stint as a non-permanent member alongside France on the UN Security Council. That strengthens Europe’s voice in the concert of global powers. Europe remains a unique creation, uniting half a billion citizens in the name of freedom and prosperity. This community needs to be able to defend itself.

EUROPE - Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has said that the policies of “liberal” forces in the European Union will divide the bloc into an increasingly Islamic west and a traditional European-Christian east. Making his first address to the media of 2019 in Budapest on Thursday, Prime Minister Orbán said his country’s objective is to ensure anti-mass migration forces become “a majority in every EU constitutional system” in May’s European Parliament elections, to combat the “progressive” open-borders policies driving the bloc’s current direction. “Liberal thinking in Europe is the main enemy of freedom. Liberals today are the enemies of freedom in Europe,” Mr Orbán explained.